Is the Theater really dead?

I took the title of this post from a line in a Simon & Garfunkel song. "The Dangling Conversation." So, don't assume that I am about to make an argument that the American Theater is dead.

That said, allow me to get to the theory of this particular blog entry.

I believe that the American Theater is dead.

Dead, dead, deadski. Dead as a doornail. Dead as disco. Dead as Jacob Marley. Dead. Extinguished. Snuffed out. An ex parrot!

I had this revelation at lunch, an hour or so ago. I was reading a book set in 1942 and it mentioned that the main hero was "walking the streets when the theaters let out and swarmed the streets with people in black overcoats."

Can you imagine such a scene? So many theaters that they're all packed full of people. Happy, fat, sociable, drunk people, paying for comedies, burlesque, variety shows, dramas, historical plays, murder mysteries, musicals, etc. A large metropolitan theater so full of people, bursting at the seams to see these shows. Sold out shows, all the time.

And why not?

There's no tv to compete with. No video games. No DVDs. No Netflix. No movie complex's. No cell phones.

There was, instead, a huge crush of people available, seeking for SOME SORT of entertainment and theater was what they had available for viewing. And so people went. In large groups. Even the common man went. It was as common an activity as you or I going home to watch our Tivos.

And yet here I am. 60 years later, spending night after night in a theater or a rehearsal space, perfecting, rehearsing, teaching this extinct artform. Which we perform for ourselves, because there is no audience anymore. It's very, very rare when a weeknight shows a sold out house in one of the city's many theaters. That wasn't always the way that it was.

Technology and our audiences have moved on from us, and yet, here we are. Still practicing it all centuries after the boom has died. We might as well be working on woodcuttings or dageurrotypes. Or shadow puppet theater. All artforms that have passed away.

I think the future of entertainment is in the internet or on television. That's where I think I should concentrate my energies. Producing another show that is gone 8 weeks after it runs (or shorter) doesn't seem to have any tangible rewards to show for all that work done. Slavishly working to present an entertainment that you nearly have to strongarm audience members to come and enjoy. Is it any wonder that typical audiences for weekend and day shows are seniors?

The Internet, friends. Produce your own shorts or features and post them online. Sell them to a cable channel and develop them as a property. Everything else is catching snowflakes on your tongue and never feeling full.

COB out...

News Flash! Clumsy Museumgoer Destroys Priceless Artifacts!

Just saw this over on AOL News...

Fucking Hilarious.

Museumgoer Shatters Vases After Stumble

CAMBRIDGE, England (Jan. 30) - A museum visitor shattered three Qing dynasty Chinese vases when he tripped on his shoelace, stumbled down a stairway and brought the vases crashing to the floor, officials said Monday.

The three vases, dating from the late 17th or early 18th century, had been donated to the Fitzwilliam Museum in the university city of Cambridge in 1948, and were among its best-known artifacts. They had been sitting proudly on the window sill beside the staircase for 40 years.

"It was a most unfortunate and regrettable accident, but we are glad that the visitor involved was able to leave the museum unharmed," said Duncan Robinson, the Fitzwilliam's director.

The museum declined to identify the man who had tripped on a loose shoelace Wednesday.

Asked about the porcelain vases, Margaret Greeves, the museum's assistant director, said: "They are in very, very small pieces, but we are determined to put them back together."

The museum declined to say what the vases were worth.

01/30/06 08:36 EST



"How was your trip to the museum today, Kenneth?"

"I don't want to talk about, mother! And I need new shoelaces, apparently!"

CIN BLOG ENTRY: Anger is a Secondary Emotion.

A few quick quick notes about this blog entry, before you read it.

First, the mention of violence done to a cab driver was a direct account of something that a normal Chicago citizen did to an actual cab driver, here in Chicago. The incident happened back in 2004. The cab driver died. The argument was over an 8$ cab fare.

Second, This whole entry was a lie.

The parts about a co-worker and so forth was all fictional.

The truth is, I'd read a friends blog. A girl, actually. And she was crazy, furious, angry about something someone had said to her and had posted about it in her blog. A raw, injured post that said more about what she was really feeling, than the anger that she was trying to capture in the written word.
I was so moved by her entry that I posted this one, in response. Without ever SAYING that I was responding to her. As far as she would ever know, this was a random blog entry about some random person at my random job place. My hope was that the underlying message about where anger comes from would reach her and lighten her load.

An interesting coda to that story, I think that girl and I are dating, nearly a year later. And if we aren't dating, we are just making out in semi-public places and making total asses of ourselves. Only time will tell.

It's just interesting to note that I was thinking about this girl and even posting careful, caring posts to her, indirectly, a full year ago. Now look where we are. Sucking each others faces in the photo booth.

An interesting year...

On to the actual blog entry.

Anger is a Secondary Emotion.
10:26am 02/18/2005

A friend of mine is angry right now.

Someone, somewhere said something to her, which tipped her off, and it has ruined her day. I've just returned from getting coffee with her and on the walk over, twin plumes of steam were rising up from her ears. She was PISSED OFF, friends.

Anger.

Such an odd emotion. So irrational, yet SO powerful. It grabs you up and compels you to do things that you would normally NEVER even consider. Like getting into the cab and running the driver over. 3 times. And then driving off and ditching the cab three blocks away.

I read somewhere that Anger is actually a secondary emotion. It’s a reaction to ANOTHER more primal emotion and the Anger is your attempt to resume control over the situation.
Someone scares you, and you get angry and (play) beat them up.
Someone hurts your feelings and you get angry and seek out revenge.
Someone makes you feel un-attractive or stupid or worthless and you try to hurt them back.

Funny how closely related Self-Esteem and Anger are, isn't it?

I used to have an outrageous temper. (I am sure that there are people who would still say that I do. I understand that. Those folks don't have a whole lot of experience with me. That's pretty much all that they know. They don't have hours and hours of calm, reasonably tempered experience to compare their impressions with. I am okay with that. )
As I said before, I used to have an outrageous temper. As a young man and a child of a divorce, I felt like I had ZERO control over my life. Where I lived. What school I attended. What I ate in a given day. Where I spent my playtime. So much of my life was decided FOR me, by parents and judges that I fought HARD to get control of anything that I possibly could, in my life. And at that young age, you are limited in he methods of self-expression. So, anger and fighting and raging fits were all too common.

Somewhere along the way, someone explained to me, the theory of Anger as a Secondary Emotion. It made sense to me. Once I subscribed to that, I could detach myself from the Anger and search out the incident that hurt me, triggering the anger. By dealing with that, I could solve the actual problem without fighting or screaming getting in the way.

So, this is how I deal with Anger, in my life.

I don't feel like I have tensions bottled up inside of me. I have pretty much addressed the things and people that MIGHT cause tension for me. Consequently, I am angry less and less these days.

(On a side note, my family has a history of high blood pressure and REALLY bad hearts. This effort to control stress and tension is DIRECTLY influenced by my will to live, without searing pain racing across my chest and launching me off the tracks and into the endless abyss. Self preservation; nothing motivates like it.)

Back to my friend. She got a coffee and I had a Hot Apple Cider and we walked back to work. She vented to me, about the thing, which had upset her. At the core of her anger, it was very clear that she had been hurt and was reacting to that. I never talked to her about Anger as a Secondary Emotion. In fact, I didn't really talk about much. I listened. And I think that serviced to make her feel better.

I just saw her leave the office of the person who hurt her and nothing was thrown and no voices were raised. I think she has transcended her anger and was in a workable place.

I am glad to see her there.

Have a Relaxing Friday.

Think about the theory of Anger as a Secondary Emotion and if you find something upsetting you, disconnect yourself and find what is REALLY bothering you.

If you do, you'll live longer. Or so I believe.

COB

CIN BLOG ENTRY: Something Very Important

For a few short months, I kept my first blog over on the Chicago Improv Network. Or "CIN".
(If you're interested in Improv or Improv in Chicago or would like to read some funny or interesting bits or be treated abysmally bad by one particular individual, you can visit it at www.Chicagoimprov.org. )

One addition that didn't last very long was the Blog section. The sites Admin, Chris MacAvoy set the system up for us and for a time, several of the CIN users regularly posted in them. I posted in my own, as often as I could. Eventually the code for the site was altered and the blogs had to go away.

Before they disappeared forever, I copied the entire contents of my CIN blog and saved them in a word program. My plan was to eventually post them in some future blog, at some future date.

That blog is this one.
That date is now.

I am reprinting them here, for your amusement or befuddlement or whatever you feel, when you read these sorts of things.

I hope you enjoy them.

Look for future installments in the coming weeks. I think that there are 10 - 12 of them, in total.
Cheers,
COB

Something Very Important.